


Until I Knocked on Your Door

by Kybee1497



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Aged up characters, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/M, Finals, Fluff, Julie is freaking out about finals, Rose is alive, art imitates life, because I am freaking out about finals, because I don’t know how to not write in characters swearing, cause I can do what I want, i write, julie bakes (cookies) when she’s stressed, just cause I really vibe with college aus, no weed, not that kind of baked, rating is for the swears, she bakes, sorry about thay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29984217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kybee1497/pseuds/Kybee1497
Summary: She’d already established that her brain had left the premises hours ago and her sanity was hanging on by a thread, but she was still shocked that the first thing that came out of her mouth when she took in the stranger standing in front of her was, “You have arms.”He snorted, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement as he eyed her up and down. “I do, grew them myself and everything.”
Relationships: Flynn & Julie Molina, Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 23
Kudos: 161





	Until I Knocked on Your Door

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back to fic with Kiwi. Brought to you by my crippling anxiety over finals, I too have four papers due, one each day until Saturday and the fourth next Wednesday. It’s fine, we’re fine. You would be proud to know (or maybe not, I don’t know your life) that I did not start this until after I cut myself off from hw last night and I finished it this morning, so slightly better than it could have been. 
> 
> This is just fluff and the tiniest bit of crack? Idk I can’t tell anymore, I’m just like that. No triggers or anything too heavy except for the swear words occasionally. Also Rose is alive because I say so, it’s not really important to the story but it’s there. 
> 
> Anyways have fun and as always I thrive off comments and kudos. So if you feel like dropping motivation to get my papers done, I would not say no. :) thanks for reading!

So, things were fine. And by fine, Julie meant completely falling apart. Which, you know, wasn’t ideal. 

When she’d first started college, she was shocked by how relaxed everything was. All through high school she’d heard horror stories about how strict and mean most professors were. Endless warnings and admonishments came from teachers and counselors, even the office ladies, “You’ll have two hundred pages of reading each week so you better get used to a heavy course load.” or “You can’t get away with that in college.” or “Most professors lock their doors after 2 minutes and you’ll just miss a lecture if you can’t get there on time.”. 

  
Most of these were wildly untrue and designed to scare students into doing their work and staying out of trouble. 

For the most part her professors were extremely supportive and kind. All they asked was that you communicated any issues you were having and they would work with you. All but two of her professors this year went by their first names. Dave had canceled class last month because he was hungover and needed a nap. 

She was thriving in college. She loved learning and her professors were amazing. She and Flynn had decided to get an apartment on campus instead of living in the dorms. They had their own space, cramped it may be, it was theirs and they loved it. 

So, college was going great, and then finals hit. She thought finals in high school were hell. That was nothing. She had four papers due in less than a week and she had started none of them, granted they were smaller papers but still. She had papers to write and exams to study for and for some reason, her professors had decided that dead week no longer existed and they were going to have regular homework assigned this week. Julie could cry, she really could. 

Instead she was stress baking at midnight. Whirling around the tiny kitchen, flour streaked across her forehead as she searched for the molasses she needed for gingerbread cookies. She’d been baking for hours and had migrated from chocolate chip to sugar cookies, then to snickerdoodles and finally, gingerbread cookies. ‘Tis the season and all that. She just couldn’t find the fucking molasses and she needed it or everything would be ruined. 

She paused, propping her hands on her hips as she took in the disaster they once called a kitchen. A stack of dishes in the sink grew dangerously tall with all the dishes she’d used on her baking binge. Ingredients littered the counter. Her mother would kill her if she could see it. Baking was a thing they did together and her mom always taught her the importance of cleaning as she went, to keep the mess to a minimum and reduce the amount of work at the end. 

  
She was right of course, just looking at the kitchen spiked Julie’s blood pressure. Baking cookies equaled a happy, stress free Julie. Dirty kitchen and the thought of cleaning it equaled a stressed out Julie. Cookies were supposed to help but now what was she supposed to do. 

Blowing a loose curl out of her eyes, she scanned the space for the damn jar of molasses. She knew they had bought one when they first moved in. She didn’t make gingerbread cookies that often as evidenced by how far down tonight’s cookie production list they were but they were still in rotation and molasses was an important ingredient. 

She didn’t know what else to make, having to start over with a new cookie type would be too much. 

Dropping her hands, she sighed and checked the pantry one more time, just in case she’d missed it the first three times she looked. And there, on the third shelf from the bottom, tucked behind the confectioners sugar, was the molasses. What it was doing on the floor and sugar shelf, she had no idea. 

It didn’t matter for now. She was on a ‘baking to push down the panic bubbling up at the slightest provocation’ mission and she had things to do. She was very deliberately not thinking about the stack of papers she needed to write or the mound of dishes in the sink. There was only room for happy baking thoughts and the smell of warm cookies. She had her molasses and she could handle this now.

~~~~

She could not handle this now. The last person to use the molasses, likely Julie on her last baking bender, hadn’t cleaned the rim well enough and the stupid lid was practically cemented on. She had tried everything. She’d struggled and struggled with the lid on her own, it didn’t budge. She’d used a rubber grippy, nope. She tried prying it off with a spoon or a well placed butter knife, absolutely not. She’d even tried that cool tapping trip that was all over tiktok, nothing. 

So now she was here, sitting on the floor of her kitchen, back leaning up against the warm oven door, staring forlornly at the betraying jar in her hands and contemplating the life choices she had made to end up here. 

She just wanted to get to her happy place, make a few dozen cookies and maybe get some sleep tonight. But no, she was sitting here in a filthy kitchen, with no papers done and no gingerbread cookies to show for it. She was a disgrace. 

Just then she heard her neighbor next door, drop something with a loud thunk and a muttered curse through the thin walls, and she perked up. 

Flynn was gone, studying at the library so she could focus. A truly great idea and Julie wished she had taken Flynn up on the offer to go with. She might have finished a paper and been on to the second one by now. 

But she hadn’t and so she was sitting in what appeared to be a flour spill on the floor. She shifted to check, yep she was sitting in flour. She’d sunk so low. But she had a point, the point was that Flynn wasn’t home or she would have begged for help with the stupid jar instead of fighting with it for an embarrassingly long time. 

But her neighbor. Julie hadn’t actually met him before, they kept different hours and he’d only moved in three or four months ago. So she supposed it wasn’t  _ that _ odd that she hadn’t met him yet. But he was a human who most likely could help her open this stupid jar and he was still awake. 

A small part of Julie that wasn’t an overstressed, sleep deprived college student on the edge of tears, knew that a reasonable person would just let it go. Call it a night and go to sleep but Julie has passed reasonable person two hours ago and she was in deep now. 

Introducing herself to her newish neighbor for the express purpose of asking him to open a jar of molasses at twelve-thirty in the morning was… a choice. Definitely not her best choice but what are you going to do. 

Hauling herself up from the floor m, she gave the butt of her pajama pants a cursory brush off before giving up. Flour did not budge if it didn’t want to. It just sunk into the weave of clothing and stayed there. 

Grabbing her keys from the entryway, she locked the door behind her and shuffled her way next door, cursed jar clenched in her fist. 

She knocked on the door, listening to the footsteps move closer, not having the capacity to be embarrassed until the door opened and a shaggy haired guy in a cut off shirt stood in front of her. 

She’d already established that her brain had left the premises hours ago and her sanity was hanging on by a thread, but she was still shocked that the first thing that came out of her mouth when she took in the stranger standing in front of her was, “You have arms.”

He snorted, the corners of his eyes crinkling in amusement as he eyed her up and down. “I do, grew them myself and everything.”

Julie just stood there for a moment, struggling to make her brain come back on and say something. She hadn’t been expecting a  _ cute _ neighbor, and he was cute. All shaggy brown hair, blue or green or hazel eyes, and frankly impressive arms on display. And he hadn’t yelled at her yet for knocking on his door after midnight on a Wednesday, well, Thursday. 

He interrupted the wandering thoughts with a gentle, “Can I help you?” and Julie snapped back into focus.

“This stupid jar hates me and I have spent the last fifteen minutes trying to open the damn thing and it won’t budge. I’ve tried everything, even that cool TikTok trick. Nothing will work and I  _ need  _ the jar to open so I can finish the gingerbread cookies and it just won’t cooperate.”

“You’re making gingerbread cookies at midnight on a Wednesday?”

“Yes!” The words came out in a wail and Julie had officially lost what little sanity she’d had that night. “I have so many papers to write and I haven’t started any of them. They’re due Sunday and I’m so stressed out about it I feel like I’m going to vibrate right out of my skin and then I’ll be a ghost but ghosts don’t have to take finals, so, worth it. But I want to cry every time I think about all the work I have, so I just avoid it and don’t think about it. Then I have even less time and I freak out more. I started stress baking at eight and I’ve just kept going and now the kitchen is a disaster, this fucking jar won’t open so I can finish my cookies and I still haven’t gotten any papers written. I’m so tired, I can’t think straight, and this stupid jar has it out for me!” 

She was crying, she had interrupted her cute neighbor she’s never met so she could rant about finals, and jars that won’t open, and now she was crying on his doorstep. This is why she didn’t meet the neighbors. Why she just stuck to her own little routine and friend bubble. She should have gone with Flynn. She should have stopped after the first batch, or second, or third. Should have done something that would have prevented her from crying in front of her cute neighbor at almost one am, but no. That was exactly what she was doing. 

“Hey, it’s okay don’t cry.” The cute neighbor stepped forward, squeezing her shoulders gently. “Let me see what I can do with the jar.”

Julie sniffed, brushing the sleeve of her hoodie over her wet eyes and blinked down at her shoes, well, her dinosaur slippers. Oh my god! She was meeting Cute Neighbor in dinosaur slippers, pajama plants with flour on the butt, an old hoodie, while crying, and she still had flour on her face. Great this day just kept getting worse. 

He squeezed her shoulders again and she realized she was still staring at the floor. 

“Oh right, here.” She offered the jar with a wobbly smile and he grinned at her.

“We’ll totally get this open, don’t worry. Team work makes the dream work and all that.”

Julie giggled and he winced, “Don't ask, I don’t know where that came from either.”

He gripped the lid tightly and twisted, biceps moving delightfully in a way that would be a lot more interesting if she wasn’t so tired, but the lid didn’t so much as budge. He let go of the lid, frowning at it. “I see what you mean, it’s clearly taunting us.”

Julie sighed, “it hates me, it doesn’t want me to have cookies.”

“Haven’t you been baking for hours?”

She rolled her eyes, “Obviously, I meant gingerbread cookies. I have more than enough chocolate chip, sugar and snickerdoodle cookies. I just need to finish the gingerbread cookies and then I can be done.” 

He perked up at that. “You have chocolate chip cookies?”

“Yep, please take some. I kind of didn’t think about what I was going to do with almost fifty cookies. We don’t have enough freezer space.”

“I would gladly take some off your hands. Chocolate chip cookies are the best. I was wondering why the whole hallway smelled like brown sugar.”

Julie’s cheeks went pink and she ducked her head, “Sorry about that, I didn’t realize it had left the apartment.”

“Oh my god, please don’t apologize for it smelling like a bakery in here. It’s  _ amazing _ !”

Looking up, their eyes locked and Julie was distracted trying to figure out what color they were. She couldn’t quite tell but whatever the color was, it was pretty. 

A closing door down the hallway broke the spell and he blinked before grinning at her and turned his attention back to the jar. “Your days are numbered, buddy.” 

She laughed and he looked up at her again, eyes shining. “Okay boss, what have you tried so far?”

Running through the list she ticked each one off on a finger. He whistled lowly when she was done. “Damn, you really went all out.”

“Yeah, and it didn’t work. Maybe I’m just doomed to be gingerbread cookie-less for eternity.”

He pointed a mock stern finger at her. “That’s quitter talk, Boss. Are we quitters?”

“No?”

“No we are not. We are two strong, smart humans and this is one jar. It doesn’t even have arms. Not to brag but between the two of us we have four. Check and mate.”

Julie couldn’t help the giggle that bubbled up or the grin that had been making her cheeks hurt for the last few minutes. 

His eyes glinted with amusement and he grinned back at her before suddenly sticking out his hand. “Sorry, delayed introductions. I’m Luke.”

She slipped her hand into his without hesitation, “Julie.”

He squeezed her hand briefly before straightening up, “Okay, Julie. Let’s do this thing.”

They headed back to Julie’s apartment because Luke did not have any of the appropriate jar opening tools at his. 

Unlocking the door they walked in and Luke inhaled deeply, “Holy shit, it smells even better in here.”

“Four different kinds of cookies will do that.”

They crossed to the kitchen and Luke looked around “Wow, okay. So I think if we combine methods we can get the lid off. You said it’s probably like, crystallized shut right?”

She nodded and he continued, “Awesome, so let’s try letting the jar soak in warm water for five to ten minutes and then we can wack the lid on the counter a few times and  _ then _ use the rubber grippy, and we might be able to get it from there.” 

She blinked, “That might actually work.”

He snorted, “Love the confidence, boss. We got this.”

Turning to the sink, Luke faltered for a moment at the towering stack of dishes in front of him. “You know what, we got this. Go sit, rest your eyes for a bit and I can set a timer for ten minutes when this will be ready.”

Julie narrowed her eyes briefly before giving up and flopping onto the couch where she could still keep an eye on him if she needed to. She didn’t really think he would steal all of her vaguely valuable things and murder her before leaving with all five dozen cookies, but a girl could never be too careful. 

She watched as he grabbed a bowl that he filled with warm water before plopping the jar in upside down. He looked around for a second before setting the bowl on the floor because there wasn’t any spare counter space. 

He paused, finally catching sight of the butt mark in the flour on the floor and chuckled. Julie had seen enough and buried her face in the back of the couch, flushing bright red and groaning to herself. Of course the first time Luke came over, the kitchen was an absolute disgrace and the image of her ass was perfectly outlined in flour on the floor. 

She heard him humming as he opened the dishwasher and started rinsing dishes. She popped her head up to tell him he didn’t have to, but he just smiled and told her not to worry about it. The humming continued as she settled into the cushions. 

He had a great voice, even if she could barely hear it. The quiet humming and soft light coming from the kitchen eventually lulled her into sleep. She let herself drift off, knowing that he would nudge her when the jar was ready and she could finish her cookies and go to sleep for real after. 

~~~~

She woke hours later to the sun streaming in the kitchen window and right onto her face. She groaned, throwing a hand over her eyes, before sitting up quickly. The window in her room didn’t face the sunrise. She was on her couch. Why did she sleep on the couch? 

Glancing towards the kitchen, the night before came rushing back in. She was expecting the kitchen to look like it had last night, piles of dishes and ingredients everywhere but it didn’t. Half the dishes had been washed, run through the dishwasher most likely, and the rest were stacked, rinsed and neat in the sink. The ingredients had all been put away and the counters were wiped down. From her spot on the couch she could see a note on the counter. 

_ What the hell? _

Rolling off the couch, she dropped to the floor in a tangle of limbs... and the blanket Luke had apparently draped over her before he left? Unless Flynn had come home? Nah, Flynn would wake her up and kick her ass back to bed. She also wouldn’t have cleaned up Julie’s mess. 

Stumbling to the kitchen, Julie shoved the loose curls behind her ears. She absently noticed that he’d even swept, as the butt print was long gone. 

She unfolded the note, the handwriting was messy but legible, as if the writer had scrawled the words quickly and with enthusiasm.

_ Good morning, Julie. _

_ Well I hope it’s morning and you slept through the night. I know I said I would wake you up, but you fell asleep quickly. I knew you were exhausted and weren’t planning to work on papers tonight anyways so I let you sleep.  _

_ I know you’re stressed so I tried to clean up a bit making it one less thing on your plate. Don’t worry about things being put in the wrong spot. You have a very impressive labeling system and I made sure everything was put away correctly. The dishes in the dishwasher are clean and can be used when you need them.  _

_ I put the gingerbread dough in the fridge. Don’t worry I googled that it wouldn’t ruin the dough first. The oven is turned off and everything should be taken care of _

_ I hope your papers don’t give you too much trouble this week and that you ace all your finals. You’ve got this, Julie!  _

_ If you ever want to hang out for non-jar defeating purposes in the future, I’d love that. In the meantime, I’ll fight disrespectful jars for you any day of the week.  _

_ -Luke _

Next to the note, was the jar of molasses. The lid was next to it with Saran Wrap covering the open jar. 

She laughed, holding the note and looked around her clean kitchen in awe. Not exactly how she planned on meeting her neighbor, but it could have been worse. She can’t believe she slept through everything. 

Humming to herself, she headed to the bathroom for a shower. She felt rested and her stress levels were at an all time low for finals week. She would get ready and then head to the library, Flynn was on to something when she said it was easier to focus out of the house.

And if she dropped a plate of chocolate chip cookies at Luke’s door on her way out, with her number tucked under the plate, that was her business. 

~~~~

Three years later, when Luke gave his speech at their wedding, he announced that he knew she was the one when she knocked on his door at twelve-thirty in the morning, covered in flour and wearing pajamas and dinosaur slippers, and the first words out of her mouth were “You have arms.”

Which was fine, his response had been “I do, grew them myself and everything.” They were the same brand of dork and it worked for them. 

And to think it all started with five dozen cookies, four final papers, three tries for success, two determined people, and one stubborn jar. 


End file.
